davidrichey wrote:I am stake executive secretary. As late as last Sunday, when I did a member lookup, I saw the ordinances for the member. Not today. Have my permissions to view data changed or is it something else?

I don't know what the stake executive secretary's permissions were previously, but the Access Table says that he doesn't have permissions to see membership records or even the individual ordinance summary. Given that, it makes sense that he wouldn't be able to see ordinances on the member lookup section. My guess is that the Leader and Clerk Resources page is being tightened up to match Handbook policy for who can see membership record information.

Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.

It appears there was a new release today which did exactly as aebrown indicated. It is interesting, the counselors have also been removed from access to the member record ,and also the IOS. There is at least one reference to a clerk or a bishopric member reviewing the ios once a year with the family, i suspect well see some additional changes.

JohnShaw wrote: It is interesting, the counselors have also been removed from access to the member record ,and also the IOS. There is at least one reference to a clerk or a bishopric member reviewing the ios once a year with the family, i suspect well see some additional changes.

Oh, no! This is going to be pretty frustrating. I understand having rights to view the membership record available only to the Bishop and Clerk due to confidentiality, but the Ordinance summary? I'm not sure that there's any value of closing the door here, but doing so will certainly stymie our "situational awareness" across the bishopric. I have been relying very heavily on the information provided in those additional pages over the last 2 years (or however long the /leader page became available online) as Counselor to the Bishop.

Here's why:
1. We live in a ward that experiences a fair amount of turnover (serve a military base), and invariably have new people moving in every month. Active and less-active alike. As such, we always have outreach efforts underway (coordinated by both the Clerk, and me, the 1st Counselor). Critical information to the type of outreach:

How long ago was this person baptised?

Do they appear to have been BIC?

Did they serve a mission (where/what language)?

When did they receive the priesthood?

Honestly, having this information greatly informs how we reach out, who we prioritize as on a more critical timeline, and who we send to make the first contact.

2. Counselors have access to Temple Recommend Status. What's the point of removing this information from the Member information page? Honestly--making us dig for it? Counselors in our ward do most of the recommend renewals, and reminding the Bishop of who could be target families to re-engage toward the temple. Important information here is:

Has the person been endowed?

Has the couple been sealed in the temple (where/when)?

How long has it been since the recommend lapsed?

3. I have been FULLY engaged in finding members who have fallen out of touch with the church (through faulty information), and the parents names available GREATLY assists in that search. WhitePages.com and so forth affiliates parents and children quite often, and the internet in general yields alot of context for understanding who we are looking for. More information helps provide a means for us to make a phone call to update contact information. The alternative is to push more names to the "Address Unknown" file, but then who is really serving them at that point?

Honestly, removing these pages obscures all the useful information that's not already in the unit directory except i) the Priesthood office, and ii) the previous ward. Perhaps the point is that the Clerk and the Bishop should be doing all this legwork on his own. Perhaps there is merit to having Bishop's counselors not having intel on ward member's experience in the church, so we are more uniform (blind?) in our ministering. In the end, hiding these pages will place MORE burden on the Bishop and slow our Bishopric's information exchange.

aebrown wrote:My guess is that the Leader and Clerk Resources page is being tightened up to match Handbook policy for who can see membership record information.

The information in question is not the full membership record, but just Individual Ordinance Summary (IOS) information. Which Handbook policy says that the bishopric counselors and ward executive secretary cannot see the IOS?

genman wrote:The information in question is not the full membership record, but just Individual Ordinance Summary (IOS) information. Which Handbook policy says that the bishopric counselors and ward executive secretary cannot see the IOS?

Regarding the executive secretary, I would ask the question, "which Handbooks section says that the executive secretary can see the IOS?" It's very clear that Church policy says that membership information should be seen only by those authorized to see it (see, for example, Handbook 1, section 13.8). So without a specific authorization for a particular calling, the default answer is "no."

Regarding bishopric counselors, however, there is indeed a specific section in the Handbook (Handbook 1, 13.6) that talks about clerks or "bishopric members" reviewing the IOS with members annually. So it does seem that the software restriction against counselors seeing the IOS is inconsistent with that Handbook provision. Note that my earlier statement that you quoted was only in the context of executive secretaries, and said nothing about bishopric counselors.

Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.

aebrown wrote:Which Handbooks section says that the executive secretary can see the IOS?

Good question. I don't see anything specific. And when I look at the counterpart to this in the MLS users manual, it suggests that "View Membership" access rights are to be given to "Bishopric members". Not sure if this means "Bishopric members" (with a capital B, meaning the Bishop and his two Counselors), or whether it means "bishopric members" (with a lower case b, meaning the 5 who attend the Sunday Bishopric meetings. The ward executive secretary works closely with the bishopric as an "administrative assistant" to the bishopric. I suspect that not a few wards currently also give "View Membership" MLS access rights to ward executive secretaries and that those bishops are relying on that. Bishops have some flexibility on how they give MLS access rights, but it appears that the LDS.ORG online access rights are not tailorable by bishops.

aebrown wrote:It's very clear that Church policy says that membership information should be seen only by those authorized to see it (see, for example, Handbook 1, section 13.8). So without a specific authorization for a particular calling, the default answer is "no."

The ward executive secretary is an administrative assistant who works closely with the bishopric. The tone of H1.13.8 appears to deal with lists given out to the wider public (e.g. not to be used for commercial purposes, etc). But it seems reasonable that the executive secretary supporting the bishopric would have a legitimate access need to IOS type info at some point.

aebrown wrote: Regarding bishopric counselors, however, there is indeed a specific section in the Handbook (Handbook 1, 13.6) that talks about clerks or "bishopric members" reviewing the IOS with members annually. So it does seem that the software restriction against counselors seeing the IOS is inconsistent with that Handbook provision.

In practice, do bishopric counselors really ever participate in supporting the annual IOS review by members at the annual tithing settlement time? I have not ever seen that happen. It is always the Bishop and the Clerks supporting that. So, if the annual IOS review is the only valid reason for bishopric counselors to need IOS access, then it would probably make sense that bishopric counselors really don't need access to the IOS data after all.

However, what jaj78 described above, sounds like a practical reason why it could be useful for other reasons (besides annual IOS review) for bishopric counselors to have access to IOS info, even though what he described is not specifically authorized in the Handbook for bishopric counselors to do. In many wards, executive secretaries might also provide that kind of information for a bishopric meeting, as tasked by the Bishop. As jaj78 said, perhaps the point is that the Clerk and the Bishop should be doing all that legwork on their own. That increases barriers and removes flexibility for the Bishop to task those at the bishopric (lower case b) meeting.

genman wrote:In practice, do bishopric counselors really ever participate in supporting the annual IOS review by members at the annual tithing settlement time? I have not ever seen that happen. It is always the Bishop and the Clerks supporting that.

I guess we all have different experiences, but I've never seen the bishop participate in the annual IOS review -- he's very busy with tithing settlement, which only he can do. And in at least a couple of wards the bishopric counselors have indeed participated in the IOS review, although it is more common for that to be a clerk function.

Questions that can benefit the larger community should be asked in a public forum, not a private message.

davidrichey wrote:I am stake executive secretary. As late as last Sunday, when I did a member lookup, I saw the ordinances for the member. Not today. Have my permissions to view data changed or is it something else?

I noticed the same thing on Sunday, we had a young man ordained to the priesthood and I hadn't seen him before in my ward so went in to check. As Stake Exec Sec I have had access to Ordinance information through the tabs, not via IOS like the Clerks, but when it wasn't there I thought something was wrong with my internet connection until just now.

What is odd, is that I can edit members phone/email via Directory but in online MLS that feature isn't available. Seems that the permissioning has been a bit inconsistant but I agree that this information is pretty important to the role of Exec Sec in prep'ing the Bishop for interviews and the like.